Aris from Hardware Busters has visited Linewell’s labs to document the new 12V-2×6 cable capacity of handling beyond its maximum rated power while being partially inserted… without breaking a sweat or burning your precious hardware.
Following the 12VHPWR connector melting debacle, the PCI-SIG, in coordination with hardware manufacturers, has revised the standard with notably new shorter sense pins that result in the 12V-2×6 connectors.
During his tour inside Linewell’s labs, Aris was able to put some new cables – featuring further modifications – through their paces. Sending 55A at 11.7V, i.e. just shy of 644W, saw a correctly inserted 12V-2×6 temperature reach around 46.5°C on the cables and 46.3°C on the connector. After wiggling the cable to simulate incomplete insertion, temps stayed very well under control at around 41°C. So, well within the safe operating range, even when partially secured.
While the load had only been running for only a short duration, approximately 10 to 15 minutes, these are nonetheless promising results. Also, this performance / temperature remained consistent even under excessive cable bending. Great news for SFF builds.
These improvements are apparently the result of new connector pins that are more conductive than the previous implementation that had higher resistance. Combined with the updated short sense pins that only allow full current flow when adequate connection is made, these updated cables should offer higher safety and peace of mind for the end user.
Note, however, these tests were conducted inside Linewell labs, which is a brand that makes power supply cables for Asus, among others.
All that is left now is to see if other PSU manufacturers will implement similar high-conductivity pins for their cables, as the revised 12-2×6 power connector has already been spotted on some of Nvidia’s RTX 40 graphics cards and FSP PSUs.
